Right i'm fully intending to sell off a lot of my chaos models and use the cash to buy a starting army for either warmachine or hordes. Now from just looking at the models, (i have no idea how the game plays and tbh having an army that i'll enjoy building is more inmortant to me than the rules) i like the look of The Circle for hordes (i like the wood golem things) and TBH i like the mercinary models best from warmachine.

Are these viable forces to field and in the case of mercinaries am i allowed to field them as a stand alone army?
Also how do they play? This shoudl give me a good jump off on which to start with.

i've played circle and they're crazy fun. then can actually be run in 2 completely different ways. super fast but fragile, or slow but hard as a rock. i prefer the rock. running them fast and fragile takes a LOT of skill in playing them. they tend to be fairly synergistic like this, and require an alpha strike. the Rock is much more forgiving, and will include a lot of the rock golem models that you like.

as for mercs, haven't played them before, but yes they can be fielded as a full army. you just have a limited selection of units based on the caster you pick.

I'd vote circle any day of the week, but that's mostly cause i love the warpwolf models and the warpborn skinwalkers.

Mercenaries is a bit of an odd-ball for a faction - it handles like 4 mini-factions in the same faction, and that makes for some very tight restrictions on what units you can have in a particular list.

The four mini-factions are Searforge (Rhulic dwarves), Talion (Pirates Arr!), High-Born Covenant (resistance fighters from Llael), and Four Star (The most generic mercenaries faction). Some models are only usable for a particular mini-faction, some work for a few. Usually you'll find Rhulics and Pirates are very restricted, but most of the models will generally also work for either High-Born or Four Star, as they're more diverse groups. For instance, Durgen Madhammer is a Rhulic Dwarf warcaster, but he'll work for Highborn or 4 star as well as Searforge. Then again, his own rules only allow him to take Rhulic jacks, even if you take him in a 4* list, which further restricts his choices.

Each caster also has their own Theme list they can take, which sometimes allows for very different sets of units to be taken. For instance, Magnus the warlord (a cygnarian Traitor) has a theme list called the bad-seeds, which allows him to take a certain number of Cygnarian units (basically defectors).

So basically, list selection is a little harder, but mercenaries as a faction is certainly fun and viable.

Meanwhile, Circle are basically a super fast glass cannon. Fast, lightly armoured, lots of movement shenannigans, lots of tricks. They have two general sorts of beasts - their living beasts (warp-wolves, satyrs ect.), who are generally super fast and very lightly armoured, and their large stone and wood constructs, which are generally quite a bit slower, but can take a hit and dish it back.

Both are great choices, though I would probably suggest circle to start with. If you can, try to get a game in at a local store, and just learn how the game works. Also, unless playing against absolute beginners yourself, expect to lose a lot when starting up. It's the nature of the game that it's more tactical, that it requires more finesse in using each model effectively, so until you learn the ins and outs of your force, and others, you'll be at a distinct disadvantage.

Hope that helps

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I suggest mercs. Focus is easier to learn then Fury, also if you decided you don't like them and want to move to another faction you may be able to use them in your new army.

Before getting either army tho I strongly recommend picking up the rulebook and the faction books. The Rulebook will give you the basics for the game and the faction books will allow you to learn more about both the factions play style as well as give you a good look at the models so you can compare and see what ones you would rather paint.

~Joker

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Eyes with out life.
Maggot ridden corpses.
Mountains of skulls.
These are some of my favorite things.

For newer players Mercs are viable but difficult to start off with. If you must, dwarfs are probably the better choice.

A good beginner faction is Khador. They are mostly pretty straight forward ie. bash stuff. But you can get more subtle and tricky with them once you learn the game. The lists can vary a lot by just changing the caster.

Like most good games, the armies are pretty balanced so you can't go too far wrong, although the play styles are very different. And then the play style of hordes is different again.

As a new starter I'd recommend Khador in WM and perhaps circle or possibly legion in hordes. But make sure you visit stores and clubs and checkout all the armies and how they play.

Thanks for all your advise guys, i've looked into it a little more and i think that i'll go with Seaforge Commision when i start up, i've always liked dwarves anyway and the Grundback warjacks are some of my favourites.

Whilst i've still not read the rules i've been looking over the various tactical threads and i've already worked out that i'm likely to be a very static tough little army if i'm using Seaforge and i'll be using a couple of units to bring the fight to the enemy whilst the core of my force turtles up.

With that in mind and with no understanding of what the terms i'm reading mean i've put together the following list.

The plan is to use the hammerfall shield corps to form a core and support them with the forge guard. These will all in turn be covered by the grundback gunners behind a rockwall cast by Gorten. The driller and basher will be used as a counterattack against enemey heavy jacks and warcasters respectively using mashalling from either the shield corp or Steinhammer if Gorten is otherwise engaged (say by being thrown by the driller).

Brun and Lug are here because i think they look awesome and i want to have another unit that can tip over jacks without having to worry too much about it costing the focus of my warcaster.

the blasters are here because they look awesome. Also Thor can play with them if Gorten is busy.

So there you have it, are the tactics sound? Is this a reasonable starting list? Can you really fit a bowling ball in a micorwave? All these questions and more answered in our next edition of Grimzag Goes to the movies.